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Kathleen Wynne turns to tough love and tougher talk: Cohn

Can Kathleen Wynne win? Love and optimism at a party love-in won’t go far in a province brimming with resentment after 11 years of Liberal rule.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne speaks at the LIberals' annual general meeting Saturday. Her message was regarded as a taste of what she would campaign on in the next election. (Nathan Denette / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Now Kathleen Wynne is putting her own spin on Barack Obama’s old presidential campaign theme:

The premier wants us to be “aspirational.” Unlike just plain hope, aspirational is a five-syllable word that telegraphs the quest for success.

In her biggest fundraising speech of the year — a record $3-million haul last week — the premier talked up her “optimistic, aspirational” view of Ontario’s future.

And at the weekend party convention in Toronto — possibly a springboard to a spring election — Wynne talked unabashedly about “love” and “optimism” within the Liberal family.

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Love beats war in a political party, as Alberta’s fallen premier, Alison Redford, can attest after months of internecine strife. And aspiration trumps desperation, as Ontario’s former premier, Dalton McGuinty, can confirm after losing the public’s confidence.

In a quasi-reunion with Liberal delegates, 14 months after winning the leadership, Wynne was still riding high among the party faithful. Unlike Redford (forced out after barely two years), she didn’t have to dodge members of her own party wagging fingers or shooting daggers in the hallways.

Her MPPs spoke approvingly of how caucus meetings have become open consultations rather than declarations from on high. “We are doing things differently than how we did in the past,” one backbencher told delegates after describing her online outreach for platform ideas.

Wynne’s latest upbeat message is an echo of her past leadership campaign: when she aspired to be premier a year ago, she won over her fellow Liberals with a speech built on similar talk of “optimism and love.”

Back then she shared some of that love with the opposition. Co-operation was her aspiration. To retain power, the Liberals wanted to make minority government work — by working with their rivals.

“I will find common ground with the Conservatives and the NDP. I will open my door to every MPP, starting with Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath,” Wynne promised at the time.

With the passage of time, Wynne may be running out of time. Now the New Democrats threaten to topple the Liberals by defeating their spring budget.

Time for tougher love. An air of pre-election suspense hung over the convention centre hallways this weekend, stoked by Wynne’s rediscovered competitive juices (she wore sequined red running shoes onstage).

“The budget that we will present must pass,” the premier warned. “And if it doesn’t, then we must — and I am determined that we shall — win the election.”

How exactly will Wynne win? Love and optimism within the walls of a convention love-in won’t go far in a province brimming with resentment and pessimism after 11 years of Liberal rule.

Mindful of that tough sell, our new premier has taken a page from our previous premier: in the dying days of the 2011 election campaign, McGuinty kept repeating that Ontarians needed a “steady hand at the tiller.”

Wynne is reviving that traditional tiller appeal by channelling her inner McGuinty: “With safe hands and a steady balance,” she asserted, she is best placed to lead Ontario forward.

Castigating the Tories and New Democrats as unworthy — “one wants a war on labour and the other believes that business is the enemy” — Wynne kept driving home the message that she remains the only safe choice.

The next election “will be a choice between my safe hands and their reckless schemes,” she repeated. “It would be a mistake to place Ontario’s economic recovery in the hands of the NDP” when Wynne was offering “safe hands and a steady balance in the face of a still-turbulent world economy.”

All three parties agree on one point: the next election will turn on job creation.

That’s why Wynne promptly claimed credit for a rebounding economy, even with the unemployment rate stuck at 7.5 per cent (higher in many regions). She tried to tar Hudak by reviving memories of cutbacks under the Mike Harris Tories. And she tried to cast the NDP as unworthy of economic stewardship.

What Wynne has failed to establish, however, are her own distinctive economic credentials. Long seen as a progressive who focused on social policy before she became premier, Wynne can try all she wants to recast herself as the “steady hand.”

But is she? With little evidence to burnish the government’s economic credentials, the premier is instead trying to juxtapose herself against her opposition rivals.

Once upon a time she showered them with love. But when politics gets confrontational, aspirational has its limits.

Now she’s trying tough love and tougher talk. What a difference a year makes.

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